SECONDARY WORLDS

First edition, first printing. From the library of the BBC Radio producer Lorna Moore who recorded Auden's lectures for broadcast on the Third Programme in January 1968 with, loosely laid in, a Faber compliments slip from Faber editor and director Rosemary Goad. Original red cloth lettered and ruled in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper designed by Shona Andrew. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. A few light spots to the upper edge of the page block. In the bright dustwrapper, showing a few light surface marks and a touch of rubbing to the upper spine tip. Not price-clipped, the publisher's £1.80 net sticker covering the original price. A nice association copy.

From the library of the BBC Radio producer Lorna Moore who recorded these lectures for broadcast on the Third Programme in January 1968, with her ownership name and a note of explanation in her hand to the front free endpaper. Also, loosely laid in is a Faber slip sent "With Rosemary Goad's compliments", Goad the legendary editor and later director of the firm. 'Secondary Worlds' contains the inaugural series of T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures, delivered by W. H. Auden at the University of Kent in Canterbury in October of 1967. As the jacket explains, the poet, chose for the occasion "topics which would, he thought, have been close to Eliot's heart as a poet, a dramatist and a twentieth-century Christian, the first, 'The Martyr As Dramatic Hero', [...] is centred principally on Charles Williams's [1936 play] 'Cranmer', the second, 'The World of the Sagas, demonstrates the light thrown by the sagas on the relationship between the secondary world of art and the primary world of everyday experience; the third, 'The World of Opera', derives from Mr Auden's experience as a librettist; and in the last lecture, 'Words and the Word', Mr Auden addresses himself to the central question which no Christian poet can evade: 'What difference, if any, do my beliefs make either to what I write or to my conception of my vocation?'" Published 25 November 1968 in an edition of 3,000 copies. (Bloomfield and Mendelson A 62).